Master To Head Astronomy Society

Clowes Professor of Science and Quincy House Master Robert P. Kirshner has been tapped to become the 40th president of the American Astronomical Society (AAS), joining the prestigious ranks of five other Harvard astronomers who have served at the society’s helm.

The 6,500 member AAS—the only professional society of astronomers in the United States—announced Friday that its members had voted by mail-in ballot to elect Kirshner over sole contender Neta A. Bahcall, a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University.

“It’s an honor, but it’s also an obligation,” said Kirshner, joking that as president, he can no longer escape attending all the AAS meetings.

Known for his sense of humor and the ease with which he is able to interact with others, Kirshner possesses the skill to be able to manage such a large organization as the AAS, said Jonathan E. Grindlay, chair of Harvard’s Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.

“His broad view and his gregarious, outgoing personality will serve him well in addressing the membership,” he said. “He’ll make sure that everyone is on the edge of their seats.”

Kirshner said he wants to do what he can to help promote the field at a time when the field is expanding at an unprecedented rate.

“What could be more fun than a field that you’re beginning to have more information about—but that you don’t really understand?” he said. “It’s only one generation that gets to see things first—and that’s us.”Replacing Indiana University at Bloomington Professor Catherine A. Pilachowski, Kirshner will serve as president from June 2004 to June 2006. He will officially be named president-elect at the end of the annual AAS meeting, to be held in Nashville in May.

Kirshner served as a councilor of the AAS from 1985 to 1988, primarily dealing with financial and business-related issues confronting the society. It was in this role, he said, that he established familiarity with the more practical aspects of running the AAS—knowledge that he says will no doubt be of aid to him as president.

In his new position, Kirshner will serve as a public representative for professional astronomers on issues concerning the field of astronomy. One of his major roles will be to represent the views and needs of astronomers on Capitol Hill.

“As president, you’re really the hit person for astronomy,” said Andrea K. Dupree, a senior astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CFA) who served as president of the AAS from 1996 to 1998. “You have a chance to speak for the profession and to have influence on where the profession goes.”

Reflecting on her experience as AAS president, Indiana’s Pilachowski says that as president of AAS, Kirshner’s voice as an astronomer will be amplified.

“When he writes a letter, people are more likely to pay attention to it,” she said. “He’ll be representing the 6,500 members of the society.”

The Road to Victory

Kirshner was selected to be a presidential candidate by the AAS Presidential Appointments Committee, which approached him months ago to ask him if he would consider being a presidential candidate. “The polite thing to do was say yes,” he joked.

Kirshner described the competition for the position as anything but fierce, saying that the AAS is not a particularly politically-charged organization. He and Bahcall did not participate in the head-to-head competition characterizing the election campaigns of many organizations, nor did they adopt complex, controversial platforms.

“It’s not that there’s some burning issue that we stood on different sides of,” he said. “She would have been a good president, too.”

As a faculty member of the CFA and professor of Science A-35, “Matter and the Universe,” Kirshner is currently researching an entity called “dark matter,” which he believes acts directly against gravity and is causing expansion of the universe to accelerate.

This dark matter cannot be described in terms of our modern understanding of the fundamental components of matter—like protons, neutrons and electrons—and instead is composed of substances indescribable and previously unobserved, he said.

Kirshner further describes dark matter in his new book, The Extravagant Universe. He is also the author of more than 200 research papers on supernovas, large-scale distribution of galaxies and the size and shape of the universe.

—Staff Writer Nura A. Hossainzadeh can be reached at hossainz@fas.harvard.edud.edu.